Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn

Keats presents a paradoxical view of art in “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” On the one hand, the urn (and therefore art) is the perfect representation of the life he longs for-one free of consciousness and the constraints of time, an unchanging moment of beauty that simply exists forever. This is exemplified throughout the poem with such lines as  “Fair youth, beneath the trees, though canst not leave/ thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare” (15-16) and “She cannot fade, though thou has not thy bliss/ For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!” (19-20).  Here in the second stanza, Keats is telling one of the stories depicted on the side of the urn – two lovers forever frozen in time.  While the idea of this seems perfect, Keats also introduces some of the problems with this, both for the lovers and for the urn as symbol for art. First, since the lovers are frozen in time they can never kiss or know their bliss. Therefore, while the moment depicted on the urn seems perfect, it lacks experience.  Additionally, I thought that Keats was basically saying that art can’t be static or free from time because in a way it would become meaningless. The lovers create a pretty portrait of love but it lacks any real consciousness or human experience and I think Keats is saying the same about art to an extent- that without time art is just another pretty thing to look at.  The speaker attempts to engage with the urn in each stanza but of course it is silent and cannot answer because first, it is literally an urn, and secondly because art that is removed from time cannot speak for itself either because it lacks context and therefore loses some of it’s meaning.
As for the last two lines of the poem, I’m a bit stumped on their meaning. Going back to the two lovers, I began to think that maybe because they are locked in a moment that is entirely about beauty and not human experience that this becomes their only truth. Maybe all art is supposed to do is be aesthetically pleasing and beautiful so it’s “meaning” or lack of doesn’t really matter. What does that mean for the rest of us who are not separate from time?  I think that what he’s saying is that truthfully, life doesn’t exist in this vacuum free from time…that this ideal is unreachable… but the things we find beautiful are ultimate truths that can.